1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to TDMA (time division multiple access) cellular mobile communication systems, and more specifically to a technique for detecting interference affecting the up-link control channel of a TDMA cellular mobile communication system when the control channel carries no signaling message.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a TDMA cellular mobile communication system, interference that occurs on the up-link control channel (for transmission from mobiles to cell-site base station) from adjacent cells in the absence of a control message from mobile stations is detected at the base station and counted at intervals and reported to the management center for evaluation. The current method of interference detection involves the evaluation of the quality of signals received on the up-link control channel. However, data corruption occurs when more than one mobile station simultaneously transmits a control message. Due to the inability of the base station to make a distinction between inter-cellular interference and intra-cellular interference, the base station recognizes such a simultaneous transmission as an inter-cellular interference event. Therefore, the current method is not satisfactory to obtain a precision interference count.